The picture of a sunny day.

ladyatheist:

thegoddamazon:

deliciouskaek:

See, this has nothing to do with you, white folks. You, as an individual, may not have done anything to me, another individual.

But I can almost guarantee that something you have said, something you have done, something you have worn, something you have repeated, something you have sung, something you have been a party to has been at the expense of a person of color.

And now I’m going in. Today is the fucking day.

I won’t speak for all of us. I am not all of us. But damn it, I am tired of it. I am tired of biting my tongue for fear of who I may offend. If I’m offending you, you are most likely the person who needs to read what the fuck I’ve been saying. 

For the most part, PoC who are talking about racism are not talking about it for SJ points. FUCK SOCIAL JUSTICE, for real. Fuck all that shit, because it’s really nice to sit behind your computer and speculate on how the experience of racism must be, but this is my fucking life.

THIS IS MY LIFE. THIS IS ALL OF OUR LIVES.

And I want to live.

And — and here I will speak for folks — we are tired of playing. We are tired of you playing your SJ games with our lives. This shit cannot continue. People are dying.

PEOPLE ARE DYING.

And I want to live.

I’m sure George Zimmerman or whatever the fuck his name is didn’t think he was a racist either. He probably never expected to be confronted with a decision as to whether a young Black boy walking down the street was dangerous or not. He probably never thought about because he already thought about it. The decision was already made. He decided that stereotypes were more important than facts, and it cost that boy his life. he decided that academia was more important than the lived experience of the folks he studied (likely for no reason than it was a requirement), and it cost Trayvon his life. He decided that a young man with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea in his pocket was a danger to him and his community based on nothing but the idea that he somehow didn’t belong, that somehow, Trayvon’s very presence anywhere near that gated white community was wrong.

And Trayvon Martin is dead.

And I want to live.

And this shit happens all the time. Not once in a while, not here and there, but all the fucking time. And damn it, this shit needs to stop.

So I’m reversing this shit today, white folks, spilling the tea all over your shit. Stop telling us to stop being ignorant, when it is your ignorance and your enforcement of that ignorance that is killing us. Stop telling us to try harder when it is your policies and enforcement of those policies that is stopping us in our tracks. Stop it. 

Stop it.

Stop pointing at the few of us who have achieved your lily-white dream and asking why we aren’t more like them when it is the society you have built that keeps us from being like them — assuming we even want to be like them.

Stop assuming that what we want is anything like what you want. You want success? You want to get by on a day job? You want clean streets and picket fences? Fuck you. I WANT TO LIVE. I  want to know that my son isn’t going to end up dead on the side of the road because some overzealous asshole with a gun decides he’s not good enough to walk down that road.

You want to be treated as an individual, and not lumped in with the rest of them? Fuck you. I WANT TO LIVE. I want to know that I’m going to be able to not have to look over my shoulder in your neighborhoods. Fuck, even in mine, as your desire to experience urban life destroys my community. I want to be sure that there isn’t a Zimmerman in a car next to me at a stop light with his hand on a weapon as I cross the street. I want to be sure that the Zimmermans who have already acted on their “not-racist” ideas are going to be held accountable, because every time they’re not, that’s another day, another instance where I have to look over my shoulder, where I have to fear for my life.

You want to be recognized for your non-discriminatory behavior? For trying to help? Fuck you. I WANT TO LIVE. I want you to recognize me as a person, not a fucking project. I don’t want to be seen as a part of something you need to fix, to save, to rescue. I don’t want to be lifted onto a pedestal, I want the tools to build the ladder my damn self. I want the shitty policies and laws and injunctions be lifted so that I and people who look like me can exist beside you, or not. I want you to stop fucking up my world so I can live in it the same as you do. I want you to stop fucking up my life, so that I can either get by or fuck up on my terms. I don’t want your terms, your way. Not anymore.

Fuck. 

I just want to live.

This. ALL. OF. THIS.

“I want to know that my son isn’t going to end up dead on the side of the road because some overzealous asshole with a gun decides he’s not good enough to walk down that road.”

Everyday I look at my son and see how happy he is and I get so sad because I know that it won’t last. One day, when he’s older, he will be confronted with the fact that he is an “other”. He’ll have to face the fact that he’s “not like them”. I don’t know when that day will be, but I know it’s coming. 

When that day comes, I’ll have to sit him down and explain to him that some people think he’s something other than human. From that day on, he will be faced with the fact that he has to live his life differently because of the color of his skin. I’ll have to teach him how to deal with police so that he doesn’t get arrested or killed for saying the wrong thing. I’ll have to hope that the talks we have are enough to spare him emotional and psychological scars. If he grows up, and he turns out to be gay or bi or trans* or gender queer, I’ll have to pray to every deity that ever existed that he even makes it out of high school alive.

White people don’t have to deal with any of that, and don’t lie to me and say they do. They have the privilege to see their children grow up happy and oblivious to the racism, discrimination, and violence the world has to offer. I wish I had that privilege, but I don’t. I never have and never will. The way things are looking, my son won’t have that privilege either.

(Source: deliciouskaek, via madamethursday)